How can "Christians" insist upon believing lies when their Savior was said to have told Pontius Pilate: "I am the truth" he implied that truth itself was the source of all that is good and absent in all that is bad. You don't have to be a Christian to believe that. Jacob Bronowski whose critique of the "logical positivist" position in his Science and Human Values pointed out an underlying, unproved social injunction implied in A. J. Ayer's analytical methods. That implied imperative is:
"We OUGHT to behave in such a way that what IS true can be verified to be so."
Ironically, Bronouski's critique may have saved logical positivism from its own inflexible consistency, placing its edifice not upon an unassailable axiom but rather upon an affirmation of values which will not admit of proof. What true and lasting ethic could not be based upon the pure pursuit of truth?
I would like to create a database of the various, multitudinous right wing/GOP myths, propaganda, claptrap and urban legends cooked up by the right wing, disseminated by a dutiful mainstream media, swallowed eagerly by a flock of faithful who never question it. But, that's more work than I am willing to spend with a entire class of deluded losers. But -the denial of global climate change is among the more pernicious and immediately harmful right wing lies.
When the right wing is confronted by truth, it tries to shut up the source of it. Lately, Thom Friedman has taken a different tack. He discounts the very concept of "truth" itself. What does being right have to do with anything? he asked recently. Well, for one thing: being right has survival value. Those who disagree will not refute that proposition; they will merely label it: Darwinism!
Even so, we will never know what claptrap might have been believed by Cro Magnons. They're all dead. The right wing only recognizes "survival value" in the exercise of raw power just as the US has tried to silence its critics abroad.
Friedman is not only often wrong, he's repetitive. Perhaps, he thinks that if he repeats a spin often enough, then one day it will be true. Keep on doing whatever it is that's making you sick. Search for your lost keys under the street lamp because the light is better there. Beat your head against a wall; one day, when you're dead, the headache will stop.
